A look Into the world of Old Comedy

History From Then to Now...

 

From Vaudeville and Radio to Television and Cinema:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

American vaudeville, pioneered by Benjamin Franklin Keith, became huge after the civil war,because this was a time when growing urbanization combined with improvements on communication technologies. Before the Civil War, traveling entertainers did however exist as well in the forms of medicine show and circus performers, as well as music halls and burlesque shows. Soon, in the 1840's, what was called The minstrel show began to be popular, featuring comic sketches and music. Most of these entertainments were at first intended for a male only audience, but in the 1880s, theater owners decided to clean up the acts in order to attract family audiences to this popular form of entertainment. In 1885, B.F. Keith partnered with E.F. Albee to manage a circuit of theaters in the major cities of the Eastern US, spreading vaudeville throughout the US. One of the hardest things for theater owners to accomplish with these vaudeville theaters was to keep creating fresh new acts each couple of weeks to keep audiences interested. In order to supply this great need for fresh talent and new material, Keith and Albee formed the United Booking Artists and later the Vaudeville Manager's Association. This monopoly kept big time actors in the association performing only for them. ( Fred Allen)

 

Vaudeville slowly began to die when theaters began to show more and more motion pictures. Owners began to realize that movies drew a bigger audience than live shows. Soon, the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chain entered a financial arrangement with Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices and RCA to become Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) Pictures.

 

Radio was also becoming very popular at the same time as these new motion pictures. Many of the early radio comedians were former vaudeville perfromers who successfully made the transition. These included Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, who would become Amos 'n' Andy, Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Edgar Bergen, Kate Smith, Jimmy Durante, Eddie Cantor, Burns and Allen, and Fred Allen. 

"The Golden Age of Radio was the period of American History between the time that commercial radio broadcasting began to proliferate until Television became the dominate form of home entertainment."(Fred Allen). Radio became the mass form of communication after the Titanic tragedy of 1912. "During the war radio became important for air and naval operations, and the technologies improved, speeding the transition from wireless telegraph to voice transmission due to the development of vacuum tube technology.After the war radio stations began to come on the air." (Fred Allen).

 

 

In the 1930s, the advertising industry became the essential main part of the radio industry. Advertising agencies produced many of the most popular national radio programs, for example, Young & Rubicam produced radio programs featuring comedians such as Jack Benny and Fred Allen. By the1940s, radio programs produced by advertising agencies reached nearly all American homes. Commercial network radio never stopped growing throughout the 1940's. Radio had basically been synonomous with advertising. But in the late 1940s, the advertising industries faced a dramatic shift. Television had come about, and loomed as both a promise and a threat to national radio. "Although many in the broadcasting and advertising industries were aware that television, which had been invented in the 1920s,might someday reach audiences and compete with radio, few anticipated that the system of national network radio would be almost entirely dismantled by the end of the 1950s."(Meyers). Network radio reached its last peak in 1948, the same year television network broadcasts began. By 1952, network radio’s percentage of advertising revenues dropped from 46 percent of all radio advertising revenues to 25 percent. Thus, network radio as a national advertising medium faded quickly. Advertisers soon shifted thier focus to television,newspapers, and local spot radio. Over the course of the 1950s and into the 1960s, radio turned away from networking and toward more local station control, less expensive recorded music and talk formats designed for local advertisers. By 1954, 55 percent of people had televisions in their homes. Television was therefore destined to pick up the stars, programs, advertisers, and audiences formerly built by radio, and carry them onward (Meyers).

 

Today, there are many vaudeville and radio advertisment influences on modern forms of media such as films and television programs. For example, Saturday Night Live is especially known for having vaudeville-influenced sketch comedy acts. These sketch comedies involve music, and quick comedy, as well as occasional advertising, just like vaudeville used to.